OnLive pricing announced, and it’s expensive

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Last week we found out that a basic OnLive subscription would cost $4.99 a month, but that just got you access to the service, community features, and free demos. Now we can tell you the real cost of using the service.

As OnLive is a rental service you technically can’t buy a game as you need to continue subscribing to play it. The options you have include a 3 or 5 day rental, or an unlimited rental. Rentals are referred to by the name PayPass.

The price of the PayPass will differ for every game, but as it currently stands unlimited rentals, which are the equivalent price of buying a game in a lot of cases, are quoted as having a rental duration “unitl at least 17th June 2013”. After that time we don’t know what will happen, but it looks as though OnLive value the life of a game at 3 years.

Below is a selection of games currently available on the service along with their prices. Remember, the first year of access to OnLive was offered free, but the standard charge will be $4.99 or more a month on top of the game charges listed below. Gamers will also lose access to all their games if they ever stop paying their subscription to the service.

So if you wanted to play Splinter Cell: Conviction for one year the total charge would be $59.99 + year of subscription charge = $119.87. That’s a very expensive way to play, but you have to consider the fact you can play the game on any hardware, meaning you save money on performance PC components. The price for the subscription is also constant regardless of how many games you buy. Those are two quite weak arguments in favor of such high pricing, though.

This is not a service I would consider using at the moment as there is no guarantee the games will remain playable after 2013. Using the same example above you will be over $200 invested by 2013 playing your copy of Splinter Cell, but then that game may disappear even though you paid so much to play it. With a retail boxed copy that doesn’t happen, with a digital download service that doesn’t happen, or shouldn’t happen as it isn’t specified at time of purchase.

Another area that seems confusing is the different rental options. Not all games come with an unlimited pass option, so if you enjoy a specific game you may have to keep paying the 3 or 5 day rental charge to play it. Hopefully that will change in the future and may just be down to continuing license negotations with publishers.

Is anyone reading this looking at those price and thinking this is good value for money? I certainly am not.